One Hundred Years of Solitude

Arcadio Buendía was
opposed to their burying him.
He is immortal, he said, and
he himself revealed the
formula of his resurrection.
He brought out the forgotten
water pipe and put a kettle of
mercury to boil next to the
body, which little by little
was filling with blue bubbles.
Don Apolinar Moscote
ventured to remind him that
an unburied drowned man
was a danger to public health.